Energy revolution .............................................................................................
Businesses are feeling a chill wind as energy costs rocket. Which is making Ecotricity’s project to bring power generation inside the factory fence look like very good sense indeed. Julian Rollins reports.
greenfutures.org.uk
Is there a more high-profile wind turbine anywhere in Britain? Certainly there are plenty of hilltop landmarks, but no other single turbine imprints itself on as many human retinas day in, day out quite as the new machine at Green Park, near Reading.
At 85 metres tall, the machine is hard to miss for the tens of thousands of people who pass by every day on the nearby M4. It is a set of circumstances that delights its creator, the renewable energy business Ecotricity.
That there are hearts and minds to win over is a fact that Ecotricity’s Gary Freedman readily accepts. However, he believes that Ecotricity’s new breed of ‘merchant’ installations can play their part in winning over sceptics to wind energy.
“We see ourselves as educators in the market,” he says. “People hear a lot about wind energy through the media, but most don’t get a chance to see a wind turbine up close. When they do, they find that they are clean, elegant and not at all noisy.”
The M4 turbine is the latest of a string of Ecotricity developments that put generating capacity right next to where commercial clients want it. Built for Prudential, the Green Park turbine serves the business park that surrounds it and also generates a surplus for some local domestic customers.
The company calls the new departure ‘Merchant Wind Power’ (MWP). Working with businesses, Ecotricity builds turbines for its partners, operating and maintaining them at their site and selling them green power at a very competitive price. Ecotricity puts up the capital and shoulders any risk associated with the projects. Customers do keep their third party electricity supplier, says Freedman, so there’s no worry that the lights will go off if the wind drops.
It has proved an attractive arrangement for plenty of high-profile organisations. Ecotricity put in its first commercial turbine at Sainsbury’s East Kilbride depot in Scotland, and the MWP client list now includes Michelin, Manchester City FC and Manchester-based Co-operative Financial Services (which bucks the trend by having its green energy generated some distance away in rural Lincolnshire, where there’s more space for the four turbines). The latest recruit is Bristol Port Company, which should have three turbines at its Avonmouth Docks early next year.
The scheme that perhaps rivals the Reading installation in terms of visibility is London’s first wind park at Ford’s new Dagenham Clean Engine Facility, which opened in April 2004. Ford’s two turbines generate around seven million kWh of electricity every year, enough to power the Clean Engine Facility, which produces all Ford’s diesel engines in Europe.
The car maker reports that the turbines produce energy 98% of the time – at a cost saving, as well as preventing the emission of up to 6,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The turbines have also provided a less tangible payback – they are a prominent symbol of the firm’s commitment to sustainability, proving popular with customers and employees alike.
The MWP approach has clear advantages for Ecotricity itself, as well. Steering a greenfield wind project through the planning process can be a long and testing business, but installations on sites that are already industrial or commercial has proved more acceptable.
“It can be like pushing at an open door,” Freedman says. “At Dagenham the turbines actually stand in two neighbouring boroughs, which meant we had to deal with two separate sets of planners. It could have been very complicated but it wasn’t – there wasn’t a single objection from the public to the proposal.”
And in the current energy climate, Freedman and co. may be busy for some time yet: “Directors are waking up to just what a huge cost they’re having to pay for power. They’re saying ‘how can we escape this?’ And the answer is simple; on-site generation.”
Julian Rollins is a freelance journalist and editor specialising in environment and countryside issues.
Ecotricity, ecotricity.co.uk |
